Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/250

 early form of music writing above cited. The London postal telegraph system dispatches newspaper material from St. Martin's le Grand throughout the kingdom from continuous perforated ribbons made somewhat in the same way, visible and legible only to an expert, and reproductions by the medium of this device would certainly not vitiate copyright.

"It may be observed that the existing law gives to the author or proprietor of a musical composition the sole liberty not only of printing, but of publishing, copying, vending, performing, or representing a musical composition; that the statute does not restrict 'copying' either to a copy of 'staff notation' or from or in any particular form, but prohibits in general any copy of a musical composition; that there is no suggestion in the statute that the copy must be one to be read, e.g., a copy of a sculpture; that any sound-record is in the wide sense as truly a copy of a musical composition as a printed sheet, which is not a copy, in fact, of the author's manuscript writing ; and that as the roll has for its sole purpose the performing by the aid of a mechanism useless without it, of a musical composition, just as a printed sheet of music has the sole purpose of the performing by the aid of the voice, the piano, or the orchestra, of a musical composition, the maker and vendor of the roll is in exactly the same position as the maker or vendor of a printed sheet of music.

"But even if phonograph and perforated records should not be considered, as is sculpture, to be ' writings,' the arguments of the opponents of this bill do not fit the case. The Constitution explicitly provides that authors shall have exclusive rights to their writings. This cannot mean exclusive rights to their written manuscripts, for these are protected by common law and no constitutional provision was